Why Italy Convicting Seismologists Is Bad For Science

As you may have heard, seven Italian officials, six of them seismologists, have been convicted of manslaughter. Did they kill a man by chucking him down a crevasse or possibly by boring him to death by explaining why California will not fall into the ocean but more likely gently drift into it?

Nope! They were convicted because right before a tragic Italian earthquake, they issued a report stating that such an earthquake was unlikely.

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L’Aquila.

A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter.

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

The good news is that they’re not going to jail yet: Italy’s legal system doesn’t let a conviction stand unless you’ve lost at least one appeal.

The bad news, really, is that they were convicted at all. They shouldn’t have been, and this just highlights an increasing problem: The courts don’t understand how science works.

The defense attorney is right: There’s literally no way to predict when an earthquake will strike. We can announce with confidence where they’re more likely to strike because of increased tectonic activity, but the reality is, the Big One could hit out of nowhere tomorrow in a place that almost never sees earthquakes. It happens all the time; in fact, a 4.0 earthquake just hit Maine, not the most volcanic or trembly of states.

The problem is that people see scientific instruments and hear science is about precision, and they take the wrong conclusions from that. Part of this is so they don’t melt into a puddle of stress: If you want to fear everything, just chat with a medical researcher sometime and ask him what’s theory and fact in the field. And that’s fine.

But when the courts start demanding more than the cutting edge of the field can offer, and start throwing men in jail for failing to live up to it, that’s dangerous. I can’t imagine many seismologists will be eager to work in Italy until this case is settled, and it can extend to other sciences dangerously quickly. Just ask the state of North Carolina, and its decision to outlaw climate change since it’s inconvenient to developers.

Science has enough problems: It doesn’t need the law breathing down its neck to fit an impossible standard, to boot.

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I read about this the other day. If I was able/knew how I would be posting the Professor Farnsworth “I Don’t Want To Live On This Planet Anymore” picture. Some truly mind-boggling depressing ignorance.

I do not know the context of their warning, but if increased activity is a sign of possible increased activity, and the scientists can not predict earthquakes reliably, why then did they issue the statement that an earthquake was unlikely?

Because a big quake was, according to all available data, unlikely. They were asked if there was going to be one. They said: “Maybe, but probably not.” As it happened, there was one. They hadn’t said there wasn’t going to be one, they’d just reported on the probability.

Science! It’s not fucking magic.

Relatedly, if they use this precedent to start jailing psychics for inaccurate readings, I will become significantly less angry about it.

There was a quake last year in D.C. I’m on the west coast where it’s par for the course. I’m told that their office’s person in charge of preparedness decided the right course of action was to pull the fire alarm.

Now that’s someone closer to a criminal prosecution than those scientists.

This reminds me of a tunnel fire in France something like 10-15 years ago where several people died. The mayor of the town the tunnel is in was convicted of manslaughter. The mayor. What the fuck is wrong with European courts?

In Grenoble, France, 16 people and companies were tried on 31 January 2005 for manslaughter. Defendants in the trial included:

Gilbert Degrave, the Belgian driver of the truck that caused the fire
Volvo, the truck’s manufacturer
French and Italian managers of the tunnel
ATMB and SITMB
Safety regulators
Mayor of Chamonix
A senior official of the French Ministry of Public Works.